[Regia-NA] viking bows

[Chris Boulton]

> Have to disagree there. The linen backing is a safety issue. Self-bows
will
> break. Fiber backings  help save the bow from explosive failure, and I
> believe they help control the shards that fly off. There is no provenance
> for blunt steel swords but you use them to provide a safe re-enacting
> environment. Bows should do the same.

We have no history here in Regia UK of injury arising from flying shards of
breaking self bows. We've been doing this for quite some time now (a good 16
years at least as Regia), and given the tendancy we have to use low poundage
bows for our archery activities, the problem simply hasn't arisen. If we
used high power, high stress bows it might be a different story, but we
don't.

On the other hand, inauthentic looking bows are very visible to the public
in the course of an archery display, and this has resulted in contempuous
comments from knowledgeable public in the past, and rightly so, so
authenticity is prefered in this instance.

At the present time, in the UK, linen backed bows are banned on authenticity
grounds. In the USA, with your more litigious society, you may feel that you
have no choice but to make compromises of authenticity of this kind, but you
ought to think carefully about each individual case.

As the person presently responsible for these matters in the UK, I do not
feel entirely qualified to pronounce on matters which may result in
litigation in the USA, and would be grateful if all the archers interested
in putting on public displays of authentic archery in the USA would contact
me off list so that this can be discussed, and if necessary a Missiles
Officer for the USA can be appointed.

Best to all,

Chris Boulton,
Regia UK National Missiles Officer.